In other words, for example, an average Al who hasn’t signed into Yahoo for 12 months won’t be able to keep squatting on prime albert@yahoo.com real estate come next month. Yahoo might free up that coveted name space for the millions of other Als–or wannabe Als—who might like to use the moniker. That should cut down on the number of users forced to use strings of numbers in their ID, whether it’s used for email or fantasy football.

Yahoo won’t say how many of its dormant account IDs face change of ownership, but it’s safe to say the number isn’t insignificant.

“It’s a good number,” spokeswoman D.J. Anderson says.

Yahoo’s new policy differs from approaches at some other large Web companies. Gmail and YouTube profile names aren’t up for grabs after they become inactive, a Google spokeswoman said, for security reasons. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company can delete users’ account data if they go more than 270 days without signing in, though there are exceptions. She declined to say whether canceled account names go back into circulation.

The move is the latest effort by Yahoo to boost its number of active members, the lifeblood of any advertising-dependent online service. Adding users–and the share of users who check in frequently–is arguably the main reason the company last month offered to pay minimalist blogging platform Tumblr $1.1 billion for its base of 300 million monthly users.

The company says offering more desirable user names might even lure new people to Yahoo’s services. Yahoo isn’t saying how it will determine who’s first in line for the most popular names.

Web surfers eager to get their hands on that precious string of characters must have patience, though; Yahoo says applicants can start asking for a new ID in mid-July, but they won’t hear the verdict until mid-August.

Inactive accounts aren’t always a curse. When a cyber attack last year hit Yahoo and revealed the names and passwords of more than 450,000 accounts, acquired years earlier from another publishing site, the embarrassment was cushioned by the fact that many of those users had moved on to other websites.